Last week I threw a party to celebrate my second novel coming out. I’d managed to get the venue I wanted in London, and I was within the budget I’d set for myself. Everything felt seamless, and barring a flurry of ‘I’m sorry I can’t make it’ messages, most people who I cared about attending, came.
There was a beautiful moment when my sister and I sat down in conversation around the book and everyone cheered us, which felt like surfing on the uppermost note of love, the groundswell of their voices carrying us on. But, it was also one of the most challenging evenings I’ve had in a while – to the extent that if you asked me if I would ever throw a party again, the answer would be an emphatic no.
I feel treacherous – sociopathic even, writing this. Especially since, when you are surrounded by people you love and care about, surely that means you should be having a good time?
What I’ve come to realise is that actually, this has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the circumstances in how I celebrate things, how I feel, how I am perceived, noting the scenarios that my introverted self finds deeply challenging, and in turn being given a priceless insight into specific scenarios that accelerate the anxiety that sits just beneath the surface of my skin.
For the next few days, I felt a fizzing in my brain. Pockets of time I mentally lost because I was overloaded with talking to people, constantly being ‘on’. Running fragments of conversations through my mind, wondering if people who said it was a great party were lying to protect my feelings. I spent days afterwards in a brain fog, trying to come back into my own body, finding the locks were ever so slightly altered and I couldn’t quite get in. Then, relief. Feeling sanity return finally by taking myself away from people for a few days.
I can’t be the only one, surely, who finds this kind of thing hard? And yet, when I talk to people about it, it feels as if I am.
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